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The Ancient Quarrel Between Art and Philosophy in Contemporary 1 This is the accepted version of the following article: Jennifer A. McMahon, “The Ancient Quarrel Between Art and Philosophy in Contemporary Exhibitions of Visual Art” in Curator: The Museum Journal, Volume62, Issue1, Special Issue: Philosophical Intervention, January 2019: 7-17, which has been published in final form at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cura.12282. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with the Wiley Self-Archiving Policy [ http://www.wileyauthors.com/self-archiving]. See entire issue which is Gold Access at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/21516952/2019/62/1 The Ancient Quarrel Between Art and Philosophy in Contemporary Exhibitions of Visual Art. Introductory Essay https://doi.org/10.1111/cura.12282 Jennifer A. McMahon ABSTRACT At a time when professional art criticism is on the wane, the ancient quarrel between art and philosophy demands fresh answers. Professional art criticism provided a basis upon which to distinguish apt experiences of art from the idiosyncratic. However, currently the kind of narratives from which critics once drew are underplayed or discarded in contemporary exhibition design where the visual arts are concerned. This leaves open the possibility that art operates either as mere stimulant to private reverie or, in the more contentful cases, as propaganda. The ancient quarrel between art and philosophy is that art influences surreptitiously while philosophy presents reasons that invite rational scrutiny. As such, in contrast to philosophy, art would undermine our agency. In July 2017, a group of philosophers gathered at the Art Gallery of NSW (AGNSW), in Sydney, Australia, in the presence of two AGNSW curators to explore the basis of their own experiences of selected artworks. Here, those commentaries are reproduced. Each reveal that objective grounds for an experience of art can be based in the community from which one draws one’s terms of reference. In our commentaries we see the expertise of the respective philosophical communities but other communities of culture or expertise might serve the same purpose and 2 hence resolve the ancient quarrel. Before hearing these commentaries, I explain what is at stake when the ancient quarrel between art and philosophy is understood in contemporary terms. This Issue of the Curator also includes an article on the community-based art criticism that emerges from these commentaries followed by an exhibition review which reveals the incorrigible impulse (also demonstrated in the commentaries) to find the basis for the most apt experience of an artwork. A response by the AGNSW curators completes this issue. Figure 1. Speakers and audience assemble for the Philosophical Intervention Symposium at the AGNSW on July 15, 2017 in front of Ai Weiwei, Forever 2003. © Ai Weiwei. Photo: © artsense.edu.au [Color figure can be viewed at http://artsense.edu.au/workshop-2017-photos/] WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ART CRITICISM? This discussion is limited to those institutions like the Art Gallery of N.S.W (AGNSW) which collect and preserve examples of visual art from various traditions with an emphasis on 3 understanding the visual-art-heritage of their citizens. European, Australian Indigenous, Asian and Middle Eastern, African and American traditions are all relevant to understanding Australian visual-art. It is important to note that this enquiry is not about visual culture generally but the narrower focus of visual art which is the purview of institutions like the AGNSW. Artworks take their place within a world of images. The twenty-first century has seen the artworld dissolve into a plethora of practices, where the art- gallery-museum takes its place as one of many public spaces which occasion experiences of entertainment, reflection, and communication about a range of topical issues (see Hein 2007: 79-81). A gallery visitor once might have felt it incumbent upon them to read about the art historical context of a work and the art critic’s view of its meaning and significance to the artworld. However, today art is often understood as a statement on a topical issue, while many visitors simply immerse themselves in images, videos or environments which strike them as evocative, not unlike the way they engage with music videos or the visual spectacle offered by a rock concert. The concepts through which an art-gallery visitor understands their experience might be drawn from popular culture rather than confined to professional art commentary (McMahon and Gilchrist 2017; and see Said 2005: 58-59). For example, many media outlets have dropped the art critic’s regular commentary. It has been suggested that this is because art critiques are relevant to only those who live in the vicinity of the relevant exhibition while online media outlets aim to capture much larger audiences.1 However, for the traditional art exhibition viewer, the art critique served as more than advertisement. The possibility of meaning-making requires a critical as well as receptive interface, and the art critic created this kind of context. The critic would defend an interpretation and a judgment with clear reasons in the form of metaphors, analogies and 4 prior examples; and when effective, the viewer could then approach the work with the configurations and construals with which the critic had equipped them. Some of the reasons for the demise of the art critic might also include a concern for diversity, multi-perspectives and inclusion. One would not want to exclude those not interested in art historical classifications and artworld theories from engaging with visual art. But when there is nothing to get wrong, there is nothing to get right either. There is scope for treating visual art as visual journalism but this does not speak to the way visual art can reflect ideas or norms emerging within the zeitgeist of our times. The artist often feels their way and it would take the art critic to articulate what was emerging in their work. This is what distinguished their work from propaganda. One had to be party to what one understood by the work. This crucial aspect of the artworld is traditionally what attracted many art gallery visitors. Richard Rorty discussed an issue in literary criticism along similar lines (Curthoys 2014). Literary criticism was seen by Rorty as an opportunity to draw the lines of ethical norms in new places and configure the shape of hope in new images. That is, it was not about the retrieval of what this or that author had in mind, but rather what was constructed by a community of readers at a particular time in history. Rorty argued that the progress of morality has had more to do with sentimentality, and opportunities to find objects worthy of our sentiments, than anything delivered up by clear analytic reasoned discourse, and that literature played a role in providing such opportunities.2 Could we ascribe this role to visual art also? The trouble with this view of things though is that sentiments can be dumb and fickle; and manipulating sentiment can be dangerous compared to persuading with reasoned argument. Aristotle recommended the politician or orator use rhetoric on a general audience because they would not be persuaded by reason alone. But rhetoric is manipulative. Unless 5 reason is brought to bear upon such persuasive meaning-making, people can be persuaded to beliefs that in more reasoned and less sentimental contexts they would reject. What does this mean for the diverse multi-voice all-inclusive engagement art-museums-galleries now foster? However, diversity is not necessarily a case of relativism as Paul Guyer’s aesthetic pluralism reveals in his commentary to follow. And as we will see in David Macarthur, Michael Newall and Mohan Matthen’s commentaries, art can be experienced in a way which is grounded in objective terms of reference other than art historical classifications and art theoretical knowledge. All the authors of the commentaries that follow, even those who do base their experiences at least in part on the art critic’s traditional concerns, such as Cynthia Freeland and Robert Sinnerbrink, explain the touchstone for their experience in their philosophical preoccupations. And the traditions and debates that ground these preoccupations constitute the philosophical communities from which they draw their terms of reference. While the communities of art historians and critics have less influence in the way art-gallery-museums attempt to engage their visitors, other communities have taken their place. So as we hope to demonstrate through the following commentaries, while the communicative capacity of art has arguably splintered according to the community in which one derives the concepts that shape one’s experience (McDowell 1996), this does not necessarily suggest that art acts upon us as rhetoric. Professional art criticism may have been overtaken by contemporary conditions such as social media and cultural diversity, but community-based practices may have filled the gap. THE ANCIENT QUARREL: ARISTOTLE AND KANT ON RHETORIC Before proceeding to the commentaries, it is worth examining how the practices associated with what we now consider the creative arts could have so threatened some in the ancient world, to see whether the conditions today are any different. Aristotle thought that art could 6 actually be exploited to achieve one’s goals. According to Aristotle, the substance of rhetorical persuasion works mainly by arousing prejudice, pity, anger and similar emotions. The modes of persuasion adopted by a rhetorician depend upon her personal character and a consideration of who her audience is, because she would need to put her audience into a certain frame of mind in order to effect change in their attitudes. By rhetoric, the audience is made to feel that the very proof of the position promoted is the rhetoric itself. In this sense, art has been thought of as an example of rhetoric.
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